A Philosopher's Stone
by love at third sight
Summary: Our favorite space duo goes out to deliver goods from one place to another. Of course, this doesn't go the way they planned it to. SakaMutsu.


a/n: Dedicated to my Gintama soulmate _heartfullofsoul_ who sucked me into this pairing.

I don't watch a lot of things like Star Wars or Star Trek, so all the space-related terms are sort of rubbish in this fic. Please forgive the inaccuracy.

* * *

-x-

_I must have been through about a million girls  
I'd love 'em then I'd leave 'em alone  
I didn't care how much they cried, no sir  
Their tears left me cold as a stone  
But then I fooled around and fell in love  
I fooled around and fell in love, yes I did_

_I fooled around and fell in love, I fooled around and fell in love  
It used to be when I'd see a girl that I liked  
I'd get out my book and write down her name  
But when the grass got a little greener over on the other side  
I'd just tear out that page  
I fooled around and fell in love  
I fooled around and fell in love, since I met you baby_

― Elvin Bishop, "_Fooled Around and Fell in Love"_

-x-

He turned thirty on a cold January's day. The snow had fallen in soft layers, muffling the jagged edges of the city.

Just an afternoon ago, he requested Oryou before he saw a wedding ring on her finger. It was probably a moment of negligence; obviously there were rules against that sort of thing in a cabaret club, but he'd seen it, and in that moment his heart had pulverized into a million pieces. He laughed heartily, maybe a little too loud and maybe a little too late, but still, he paid for a bottle of Dom Peri. Then he left after finishing one shot, laughing his way out before he went outside and sat on a bench in a park, somewhere far way from Kabuki-chou where things were quiet and peaceful. Nobody was out, not in this sort of cold weather where you could see your breath rising up like little steam puffs into the cloudless sky.

"Man, to be like this at my age - " He stretches out his limb, trying to stretch out the infinite sadness the way he did with everything else. "What a shame, what a shame."

Mutsu finds him fifteen minutes later. Her winter coat is flecked with snowflakes and she silently hands him his shawl. He declines.

"Don't be stupid."

"Ahahahaha - Mutsu, why don't you just punch me into that river over there? Save both of us the hassle."

She picks up on his dejectedness with ease. "And pay the hospital bill after you catch pneumonia? Not on my watch."

"Unsympathetic as ever, aren't you, Mutsu?" He laughs bitterly. "Let me freeze here in peace. Take the ship, leave me."

She seriously considers it for a moment. And then says bluntly, "Don't be so melodramatic."

It pisses him off sometimes, how she's never really understood his odd attachment to certain things. He's a finicky man with a soul of a young boy. He likes new things, new gadgets, new planets. But Oryou had been one of those things that he'd set his eyes on ever since he went back to Edo - he liked the way she talked, the way she would say no every time, the way she poured a drink to her customers. And he figured that was the joke, he knew it was a charade and a scam and a way to waste his money but he still fell for Oryou, now in permanently in the arms of another man.

Finally Mutsu sits down next to him on the bench. "Oi. Tatsuma. What's the big idea?"

"Oryou's getting married."

"Oh?"

"Yep."

"You didn't seriously like her, did ya?"

There was a short pause before Mutsu's eyes widened in surprise. "You _did_."

He picked up a clump of snow, molding it with his bare hands into a ball before throwing it aimlessly at a lamp post. "I kept offering her to go to space with me. She always said no, but I guess - " He started laughing. "Mutsu, I'm a big idiot! God, I'm a big, big, idiot! Who the hell would wanna go to space with me, anyways?"

"Your crew?" she suggests. "Ya know, they love you. One woman ain't a loss, Tatsuma."

"I guess I don't see things the same way as you do," he replied.

"I guess not." But she still sat next to him like that for a while in silence, while they watched the snow fall softly to the ground. Eventually he asked for his coat, which she gave to him without a single "I told you so". And when the sky grew increasingly darker and smokier in color, the stars came out shining, even with all the light pollution in the city.

"Don't we have somewhere to be?" Sakamoto finally asked. He wasn't laughing.

"Does it matter?" Mutsu looks back at him. "Business meetings come and go."

He sighed. "I... never mind, then."

Eventually he did get up from the bench and walked aimlessly, Mutsu following him steadily. If he paused in the middle of his step, she stopped walking, too.

"You should go to the ship," he said softly.

"I'd rather you not puke when we get back," she said curtly, but when he looked back he could see her eyes softening. "If you're gonna drink, I'd better supervise ya."

"All right," he said, sighing. His head dipped under the plastic frills of the oden stand, still open for business. Mutsu set her hat next to her on the bench and requested two flasks of sake.

"Don't drink too much. We have an interview tomorrow with some important guys. I don't want ya looking like a homeless drunk."

"Oh yeah?" Sakamoto swished the alcohol inside the flask and poured some into a small cup. "With who?"

"Big galaxy media." Mutsu sighed, placing her chin on her hand. "I think it's a pretty big newspaper syndicate. We'll have a small article."

"That's nice," he said.

"You're not listenin', are ya?"

"I'm listening, I'm listening... "

That being said, he still choked out tears while she was in the middle of pontificating exactly why tomorrow would be so important to the company.

"I - I'm r-really s-s-s-orry, Mutsu," he said, his chest rising in short gasps. She looked at him for a moment before pulling off his sunglasses from his head, wiping the lenses clean with her shirt.

"It's all right," she said. She slides the sunglasses back to him.

He's always worn his heart on his sleeve - if he's mad, sad, or happy - it shows. The entire company probably has seen him in all three stages at one point, but in general he bounces back quickly enough. She's confident tomorrow he'll be back to normal, even if this woman - whomever she is - has slipped away from his reach.

When he's done drinking cup after cup of sake, he asks her why she's being so nice to him. Mutsu just shrugs, and he doesn't bother her any more with that. The answer is something they don't talk about - friends, trust, all that sentimental garbage was something for him to clarify, not her. Though she warned him about not drinking too much, she lets him drink to his heart's content anyway. All the while, he's crying pathetically, mourning about Oryou while she chews on her oden, appreciative of hot food on such a cold day.

When she hauls his limp body to the ship, nobody asks questions, save for Granny, whom Mutsu requests her to make some tea to take in her cabin later.

"And will Sakamoto-sama ask for a Bloody Mary tomorrow morning?" she asks politely, smiling at the man snoring on Mutsu's shoulder.

"Yeah, he will. If it's not too much trouble - "

"Not at all, young lady." Senile as she might have been, the old woman was a wonder in the kitchen. Mutsu made her way to the captain's cabin, hand searching around in her pockets to unlock the door. Sakamoto was a lot lighter than she expected, even if he was taller then she was.

His room was messy. There were action figurines and faded pictures of constellations strewn across his desk, next to the list of revenue and profits she'd written for him last week. Above his bed, an old poster of the Milky Way galaxy hung in an open black frame. Permanent marker crossed out the planets they'd visited before.

Mutsu hadn't visited his room for a long time, even though he held her keys and she had his. Occasionally he'd bring over a woman or two, but other than that, there hadn't been much excuse for her to go over to his place.

After dumping Sakamoto unceremoniously into his bed, she ruffled curiously through his things. On the very corner of his desk was a small picture frame laying face down. She picked it up.

It was a very old, very faded photograph of him, Gintoki, Katsura, and Takasugi standing together laughing at something he must have said. They all looked incredibly young. For some reason, her heart went a bit sad and she placed it carefully back the way it was, face down, away from the general direction of his mess.

"Oryou..." he groaned from his bed. Mutsu looked back at him, but he was still snoring. She sighed, placing a pack of nausea pills on his nightstand before whispering, "Good night, you idiot."

-x-

"You've been declared as the galaxy's most reliable transport service ship. Mutsu-san, what do you have to say about that?"

The subject in question smiled enigmatically. "It's a lot of work. It requires a lot of sacrifice, too. But I'm very honored to receive such an honor."

"I see. What would you say, to those who would like to pursue opening a business in space?"

"Be kind." Mutsu said. "Always keep an eye out for opportunity disguised as work."

"Thank you for your words, Mutsu-san. Now, if you could pose for a photograph - "

"Of course."

"And your partner - ah yes, Sakamoto-san, stand next to her - "

She would later recall that her smile had been carelessly thrown out, just for the sake of the magazine photograph. Sakamoto laughed heartily, as he always did, thrusting out his arm to rest on her shoulder. And because it was in public, she momentarily forgave him for any physical transgression, aware that negative attention wouldn't do for the sake of the Kaientai.

Twelve years in the business and suddenly serving one of the biggest corporations on a planet not too far away from Earth had landed them a cover in an inter-galatical magazine. It was still unexpected when they stopped at a fueling station at the edge of the Koboko planet and saw their faces grazing the cover of _Worbes_.

"Amazing," she said. "I look horrible."

"It's because you keep wear those manly clothes," Sakamoto said, swiping the magazine from the hands. "Hmm, I do say I look rather dashing myself, ahahahaha - "

She resisted the urge to punch him. "Feh, whatever." The inter-galatical clock showed that their schedule was ahead of time. A few of her subordinates came to the two of them, reporting that the ships were good for several million light years. Nodding in approval, Mutsu turned to Sakamoto.

"Ready to go?"

"Of course," he said, laughing heartily with no reason. Relief washed over her when she saw him smiling back to normal.

-x-

At a business conference, a man named Watanabe was surveying the two of them, his fingers pressed together like a spider web. Sakamoto was pleased upon meeting a Japanese human so far out in space, and made quick conversation with the man.

"The razor tongued Mutsu, and the blustering Sakamoto Tatsuma," he said conversationally. It caught both of them off-guard, to be referred in such derogatory terms before the man held up the magazine article in reference to their titles.

"... We never read it, did we?" Sakamoto whispered to his companion, taking it in good stride, though Mutsu was a little offended at the journalist himself. Really, if she ever saw that blasted writer again...

"No, I guess we haven't," Mutsu said darkly. He shot her a warning look before warmly continuing the conversation with the gentlemen in front of him.

"Yes, that's us, ahahahaha! What can we do for you, Watanabe-san?"

"I invited you two because a friend of mine has used your services before and was pleased with it." The man stood up straighter. "So I have a proposition for you two fine people."

"Lucky for you, we're in the business of propositions," Sakamoto said happily. "Have at it, my good man."

"Have you two ever heard of the Philosopher's Stone?"

"... Assuming this isn't a Harry Zotter or Fullmetal Alchem - "

"No! No no no, this isn't anything fictional like that," the man said earnestly. "It's actually a very real thing. It'll grant all your wishes, but unfortunately, it'll only react in certain conditions."

"Such as... ?" Mutsu asked skeptically.

"Well, it has to be activated by a giant inferno. Specifically, the Alpha Centauri star."

"So you're saying we have to throw the Philosopher's Stone into the star so that it'll grant all your wishes?" she enquired, raising an eyebrow.

"No, it'll do that job once you're in the star's gravitational pull."

Mutsu sighed. "Tatsuma, this guy is an idiot. Let's go talk to someone else - "

"What's your commission rate?" the man asked, eyes suddenly desperate.

"Depends on the distance and weight of the goods," Sakamoto said, ignoring Mutsu's impatient tug on his sleeve. "For special services we _do_ charge a lot higher than goods in bulk."

"Tatsuma! You gotta be jokin'!"

"I'll lay down twenty percent of my price and pay the rest when the task is finished," the man said, hurriedly, laying down a pack of bills.

Sakamoto swiped the money, counting it swiftly with his fingers. Then he handed it to Mutsu. "Forty thousand grand. Impressive. You said this was twenty percent of the commission rate?"

"Yes - I'll pay more upfront! But you'll do it?"

"It's illegal, ain't it?" Mutsu said sharply. "The only reason ya want us to carry it to wherever it is - we're gonna be in danger, isn't it?"

"I can't guarantee that you won't be attacked on route, but isn't that why you guys have so much artillery on your own ships?" Watanabe looked unhappy now. "I thought you guys transported everything."

"And we do," Sakamoto said, reassuring the man with a hand on his shoulder. "Don't mind her. She's just very cautious, ahahahaha!"

"Tatsuma! We're not risking the lives of our crew just for forty grand!"

"You're right. We're not. So instead, we should embark on it by ourselves."

"**_HUH_**?"

-x-

"Look, they've been wanting a vacation for a while now," Sakamoto explained cheerfully as they went outside of the space conference center. Mutsu was carrying a bottle of vodka and drinking it neat, as she didn't think she could get through the night without some form of alcohol to stave off her partner's stupidity.

"And you're gonna take them... where?"

"Planet Waiiha, of course!" He grinned and gave a thumbs-up. Mutsu took a swig from her bottle, deciding it would be more productive to do so rather than crushing his hand. "I heard it's a pretty good vacation place. So I was thinking I'd dock our ships over there, pay a few guys to secure it while we take our best space shuttle and carry this Sorcerer's Stone to wherever this guy wants it delivered."

She hiccuped slightly, and took another swig from the bottle. "Tatsuma, you're a fucking idiot. Why can't _I_ go on vacation, huh?"

"Because you know as well as I do that this company would be destroyed without your help, Mutsu! Ahahahaha!"

She sighed, and handed the bottle to him. "I'm getting sixty percent of the reward, ya hear me?"

"All right," he agreed cheerfully. "As long as you're the pilot."

-x-

"Dear, I've been thinking that you ought to get married for a while," Granny said sympathetically as Mutsu was plotting out coordinate points for the trip. The old lady carefully laid down a cup of hot tea on Mutsu's desk as the ship was headed towards Planet Waiiha.

"Granny, no offense, but I _really_ don't care," Mutsu said, scribbling down her calculations for fuel costs. "I'm twenty six and I work in space. I am the least eligible bachelorette to exist. I don't even have _time_ to date."

The elder clucked her tongue impatiently. "Such bold words, and you won't look at what's in front of you. Well, that's none of my business anyway..."

The door clicked behind her before Mutsu realized exactly who Granny had been referring to, and then she stood up so fast that her head hit the low ceiling of her cabin.

"OUCH - goddamn it!" she said furiously, rubbing her forehead. Glaring at the ceiling as if she could bore holes in it, she rose up from the ground. Sakamoto always made her feel extra violent even when he wasn't there, which was truly a feat of nature.

Burying her nose into paperwork always soothed her, and so she forcibly threw out all thoughts of a samurai captain, preferring to focus on the numbers. Taxes, profits, revenues - these were all concrete things that she could depend on, unlike Sakamoto Tatsuma.

-x-

Mourning the loss of a potential vacation, Mutsu waved her subordinates a tired goodbye as she revved up the engine for her and Sakamoto's trip to the Alpha Centauri star. Her hand gripped the ignition handle, lifting the spacecraft into the atmosphere.

"Where's the Philosopher's Stone?" she asked, yawning.

"Right here," he said, holding a ruby gem in between his index finger and his thumb. Mutsu glared at him.

"Don't touch that thing! We have no idea what it does!"

"Well, it grants wishes, right?" He deposited it into a small bag and slipped it into his pocket. "Seems harmless enough."

"God save us if you suddenly waste a wish on Oryou," she said grumpily.

"Ahahahaha, I wouldn't wish for that! She's probably happy where she is right now. Who am I to alter fate such as that?"

She raised her eyebrow in suspicion. "That's... actually pretty profound. Congratulations."

"I'm hurt, Mutsu. Truly, you slay me!"

While she plotted the point coordinates into the shuttle system, he was brewing a pot of sim-coffee. Pouring the beverage into two mugs, he set one next to her.

"Thanks."

"No problem. We could set the thing on auto-pilot, ya know."

"I don't trust it. And anyways, what would I do in the meantime?"

He pulled out a pack of UNO from his sleeve. "The manliest of games, see?" She glared at him.

"You've gotta be joking."

"Orrrrrr, we could play truth or dare. Your choice."

Sighing, Mutsu decided between the lesser of two evils. "The second one, then."

Sakamoto settled into a chair next to the pilot's cockpit. "So you go first."

"Truth," she said, her thumb expertly navigating the shuttle passing through the astroid belt in front of them.

"Have you ever been in love?"

"No."

"... Damn," he said. "Seriously?"

"What's so hard to believe about that?" Mutsu asked, already a little grumpy. "It's never gonna happen, so there."

"Everyone falls in love eventually," he said. "Dogs do, cats do, aliens do - "

"Well I don't plan on it."

"Listen, _no one_ plans on it," Sakamoto said, kicking back his feet on the portal dash. "If we did, then there wouldn't be all those sappy love songs on the radio."

"Well, maybe those people are delusional," she said.

"Or _maybe_, you're just too much of a jaded harpy to believe in what makes the world go round." Sakamoto took a sip of his sim-coffee and grimaced. "God, this stuff sucks. I shoulda stocked up on _real_ coffee when we stopped on Earth."

Mutsu rolled her eyes. "Your turn."

"Truth."

"Who else did you fall in love with other than Oryou?"

"Well, honestly? I dunno. I guess Oryou was more of a habit than anything." He finally set his mug away, giving it up. "I don't really, uh, _commit_ to a woman, if I'm being honest with you."

"Why?"

"Who wants to be with a guy who's gallivanting off in space all the time?" he asked, shrugging.

"I thought that wouldn't stop you from falling in love," Mutsu said.

"Maybe. I guess those things take time. So, my turn. Dare?"

"I'm piloting this spacecraft that you swindled me into doing when I was half drunk," Mutsu retorted. "I'm not getting out of this damn seat."

"Well, if I dared you to fly this ship through that nebula, would you do it?"

With a sigh, Mutsu shook her head. "Jerk."

Her foot pressed on the accelerator. As soon as the ship lurched, going from at a steady pace to the rate of an aerial warship, Sakamoto cheered and ran to the side of the window, laughing like a child as he looked at the stars passing by.

After a minute of this, though, the ship slowed down to a constant speed once more.

"Awww, c'mon Mutsu - "

"I just washed this thing," she said irritably. "All that stardust is gonna clog up this machine if we're not careful."

Her partner sighed. "You just wanna suck out _all_ the joy in life, don't you..."

After an hour of interrogating each other with mundane questions, such as the color of her panties (she slammed him into the wall for that one, denting the fridge), or the reason why he wore those sunglasses all the goddamn time (he thought it made him look cool), they finally got tired of the game and just picked up the conversation instead.

"Say, when was the last time that me and you got to hang out like this?" Sakamoto asked, leaning back into his chair, nursing his jawline as he did so.

"Who cares?" Mutsu asked. "We're always together, aren't we?"

He grinned. "Yeah. Hey, you remember Granny that one time when the Chidori picked us up? She nearly blew us up!"

"I kept her out of the control panel after that," she admitted.

"Good idea, Mutsu! Man, I don't know what I'd do without you..."

Mutsu had been in the middle of sipping her sim-coffee before remembering the older woman had said to her the day before.

_"Such bold words, and you won't look at what's in front of you. Well, that's none of my business anyway..."_

Choking on the beverage, she let go of the steering wheel, wheezing. Sakamoto hurriedly pressed the auto pilot button before whacking her on the back.

"Oi, oi! Get a hold of yerself! Ahahahahaha!"

"Shut up!" she said, eyes watering. She coughed some more, clearing the fluid from her lungs before glaring at the mug as if it were responsible for the murder of her pet cat.

"That coffee really does suck," she growled, her cheeks blooming pink. "What the hell, Tatsuma?"

"My bad. They said it was a tourist treat, ya know? So I mean - "

"Don't believe everything they tell you," she said, her voice uncomfortably high-pitched. She coughed again. "They're just trying to get your money."

"Well, to be fair, we're trying to do the same thing, here."

She sighed. "That's different, and you know it."

"Yeah, yeah." To his credit he poured down the rest of the coffee down the incinerator. "Anyways, we could just drive to the star, activate the stone, and wish for more money, don't you think?"

"I don't think it'd be that simple," she said. "Otherwise he could have driven it himself."

"You're saying we're flying into a trap?" Sakamoto rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "No wonder you loaded this thing up with artillery."

"There's gotta be strings attached with that sort of money," Mutsu said. "I don't like it. It's almost like we're bounty hunters."

"Well, if I'm gonna be a bounty hunter, then at least I'm gonna be a well paid bounty hunter, hahahaha!"

And with that said, he pushed down his seat to take a nap, apparently exhausted from his activities last night. Mutsu scowled at the idiot, but continued to fly the ship as they made their way to the Alpha Centauri star.

_We're just friends, Granny_, she thought to herself, as the ship propelled itself through space. _There's nothing else to it than that_.

-x-

The Kaientai wasn't a company, but functioned more an instrument, with ships and guns and people orbiting around the force that was Sakamoto Tatsuma. Wherever he went, they followed, because he absorbed contentment easily and in big and small pleasures alike. In the vast expanse of the universe, he scooped up stars and dealt his goods with a fair price. He spoke with a charming Tosa accent and surprised most everybody with his boyish handsomeness when he took off his sunglasses. In the midst of backstabbing politics and interstellar wars and criminal syndicates, he simply bowed his head when necessary, flew off to other stars and galaxies, and laughed delightedly at any mention of illegal behavior.

He loved stars and ships and he never strayed too far from Earth, though the mark of a good tradesman meant he never quite forgave those whom had the misfortune of appearing on his bad side. When someone was good with him, though, he always paid his debts in full and threw in a little extra.

In retrospect, Mutsu believed that if her dead mother could have looked at her now, she would have been proud. Vice captain of a big fleet of ships, loyal to nobody else but one man, and a millionaire at her age. She could have retired a year ago happily, but for some reason, never quite pulled the trigger as of yet.

Around a guy like Sakamoto, it was only natural that someone like her had to play the role of being a grown-up. It was probable that he acted more like a kid around her precisely because of that attitude, which sometimes pissed her off, but that'd been the way they worked since Day 1 of Kaientai's formation. She called the shots, and he dealt with all manners of charming their customers and workers, which suited her fine.

Her father had never been kind. In fact, after her mother had died, he had treated her as if she was a burden, and left her to grow up on her own devices. But Mutsu had shaped fate with her own hands. She wasn't going to take the usual path of the Yato; to kill or be killed. So she still went with her father, ignoring that it was a slave ship full of helpless people, kidnapped from their own colonies and expected to be exploited for their labor.

Ethics in outer space were a whole different animal than the ideals she saw on Earth. She had already seen plenty of her own kind, killed unfairly in the midst of a political struggle. She wasn't surprised when the crew planned to kill her after her father died from a strange sickness. Objectively, she had only been fourteen years old.

If someone had told her that Sakamoto was a godsend, she wouldn't have believed him. But there he was, and here she was, piloting their own ship surrounded by the celestial bodies of heaven.

"Maybe I'm just an idiot," she said to herself, her hands finally relaxing the steering wheel on her ship. "Following this guy for twelve years... really, what the hell am I doing... " Besides her, Sakamoto was snoring, his sunglasses still perched on his face.

In an odd moment of frivolity, she plucked them off the bridge of his nose and set them to the side. He looked a lot calmer like this, asleep than awake. He was one of those people who burned like a firecracker, blazing bright for a while before descending into the state of the dead. It was an odd habit of his, to take regular power-naps rather than the recommended sleep of eight Earth hours. He said it was something that he never grew out of, coming out of the Joui war.

While she flew the ship, something beeped on the dashboard radar. She zoomed in on the screen with her index finger. "What's up?" she asked the computer.

"_Two ships coming closer, in three kilometers_," the computer intoned.

Mutsu narrowed her eyes.

"Prepare discreet artillery."

"_Roger. Would you like to include the missiles_?"

"Yes. Activate stealth mode."

"_Stealth mode activated_."

With all hope, they could pass by unnoticed. This rendered the ship immune to heat, infrared, and laser detection.

She switched to an alternate route, steering the ship to a nearby astroid. Camouflage would be essential for such situations. Hovering by, she peered out from the ship from the window, glancing once more at the screen.

"Damn," she muttered as a massive space craft floated next to her.

The monster was made of pig iron and steel, dwarfing the small airship Mutsu had been commandeering with only two people on board by a thousand times. She held her breath, eyes peeled for any sign of danger, thumb precariously hovering over the button that would let her fire at will, though admittedly it wouldn't have stood a chance against such a gargantuan ship. She could only imagine the cost of space fuel might have been for the average time warp.

"Focus, Mutsu," she said to herself. _This isn't a time to slack off_.

And to her horror, several small shuttles were dispatched in her direction. Her instincts had been right, and she uttered a Yato swear word as she pressed on the button to disengage the air missiles.

Amanto space technology, unfortunately, had kept up with the latest advancements. Mutsu considered the possibilities as she booted up the warp machine, preparing for a quick escape in the worst case scenario.

"Tatsuma!" she barked out. "Wake up!"

"Mmmmmph - wha's going on?" he said groggily.

"We're being attacked!" she yelled, flipping the spacecraft, feet slammed on the accelerator. "Put on your seatbelt!"

"Oh! I see, I see, so you were right!" he said, though he did click on his belt. "Computer! What's the closest net neutrality station?"

"_Two light years away_."

"Damn," he said, as Mutsu executed a barrel roll to avoid a nearby missile. He checked the map. "And the nearest wormhole is too far away - "

"It's all too convenient," she said, weaving the shuttle past the debris in space. "This had to be planned! We shouldn't have taken on this mission."

Sakamoto looked behind him. "Hate to tell you even worse news, sweetheart, but I think more are coming for us."

Mutsu glared at him. "It's your fault for being so goddamn generous!"

"Well, _excuse me_ for wanting to spend time with you!" he retorted.

"What?"

Her momentary distraction led to a small explosion on the left wing of the space craft. Mutsu cursed as she leaned towards the engine, coaxing every inch of speed from the machine.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, you little punkass, I don't wanna die out here with this idiot in space - "

"I'm deeply offended, Mutsu."

"Good," she said. "Computer, activate the nitro booster."

"_Nitro booster activated_."

And with a final burst of speed, they finally made some distance between the closest shuttle in pursuit.

"Finally!" she said, almost shaking in relief. "Looks like they're not chasing us anymore."

"They might have more enemies set ahead of us," he pointed out reasonably.

She took a deep breath, counted to ten, and then breathed out. "Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you," she said angrily.

"Hold on, Mutsu. All this means is that the Philosopher's Stone is a very real thing."

"We're smuggling illegal goods!" she yelled out. "At the risk of our lives! Do you realize how many people are waiting for us at the end of this mission?"

"Yes I do," he said, very quietly. He finally unbuckled his seatbelt, standing up. "There's an extra shuttle that'll get you back to Planet Waiiha."

"I - "

"I can't disappoint a client of mine. If you don't think it's the right job for you, then I don't have any right to force my right-hand man to go through it."

"So you're just going to go through this job alone?"

"Duty calls," he said, shrugging. "I've been extraordinarily lucky all these years. Why not take a risk today?" he asked, smiling sadly. Turning away from her, he turned to the screen ahead of them. "Disengage spare shuttle?"

"_Spare shuttle, disengaged_."

The plasma wall behind them dissolved to reveal a much smaller, but much faster and more efficient spaceship behind them. Sakamoto handed her the keys. "All yours, Mutsu."

-x-

This was what she'd been looking forward to, the chance to go back to a safer place. So why did she feel so uneasy?

The answer came much too quickly for her liking. _You're leaving him behind, alone to confront such a huge enemy. Coward_. Her own consciousness was sneering at her.

"Shut up," she said, turning the key into the ignition slot.

_And you dare call yourself a Yato! The strongest alien race in the universe. You dare not fight with your true nature, but suppress it with such petty things like human beings and the trinkets of trading?_

"Shut up, shut up, shut up," she said, her hands gripping the steering wheel. The ground of the spaceship Sakamoto was piloting disappeared, and the engine fuel kicked in. The shuttle dropped down into space and suddenly the windows of her ship were not images of chrome but of inky blue skies and translucent stardust. To go in the opposite direction of Sakamoto's spacecraft was not feasible, and so she entered a route into the engine diagonally from where they had originally started to avoid unfriendly fire.

Then she looked back at Sakamoto, who was waving her goodbye. Unbidden, a memory flashed back from a long time ago.

_"The ones that threw her away like a stone twice was you. I'm a merchant. If you just pay up, I'll sell you a ship or a bag or whatever with a smile on my face. But no matter how big your sacks of cash are, as customers that don't know the value of that stone... and as scum that doesn't know the value of a comrade, there's no way in hell I'd give her to you. Now may I please have her back, sir?"_

A hard knot formed in her throat when she realized he'd never once told her goodbye in their twelve years of working together.

"Asshole," she said, angrily brushing away a tear from her eye.

-x-

Sakamoto saw her fly away. He took out the Philosopher's Stone from his pocket for old time's sake, and tossed it lightly from one hand to another.

"And here I thought I was too old to be in love anymore," he said out loud, looking at the ruby gem with a bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. The stone he once tossed at Mutsu happened to be the same shape and weight as this strange jewel.

Just like that, he'd fallen for another woman, and not even a human one at that. Stupid. He opened a package of anti-nausea pills, swallowing them dry before settling into the pilot's seat.

-x-

"Oh fuck it," Mutsu finally said, and turned the spaceship 180 degrees from her original direction.

_I've already saved him a billion times, what's it to me to save him again? _

And indeed, when she rushed back to the direction of his ship, he was bombarded with artillery from another spacecraft. Only to have her blood pressure kick in once again.

"TATSUMA, YOU ASSHAT!" she screamed into her intercom. "FIRE BACK AT THEM, YOU IDIOT!"

"Oh, is that you, Mutsu? Ahahahahaha! I don't think I know which button it is - "

"IT'S THE RED ONE! THE RED ONE!"

Yet with all the accuracy their expensive ship had cost them, their opponent seemed quicker and more nimble than Sakamoto, who was admittedly striking liquid luck with the way he was missing all the gunfire. Mutsu couldn't even land one decent shot, which was beginning to worry her.

Two against one - why the hell wasn't it working? Firing a heat missile was almost futile in the vacuum of space, and she guessed that the ship opposing them was made of a nonmetal material; otherwise the magnetic bombs would have at least worked some form of damage to the machine. She gritted her teeth, and flew her shuttle nearby for a better chance of eliminating the enemy.

Unfortunately, her timing was off-beat. She had missed the flashing green light that indicated the preparation of the nuclear energy used to fire an electromagnetic pulse that had the capacity to melt the entire machine.

She was too late to dodge anything.

In the nanoseconds that followed as the beam headed towards her ship, she didn't have time to prepare any thoughts of value. There were no counterattacks to be found, no exit strategies. She was thinking about how stupid Sakamoto had been, and how she hoped Granny wouldn't be too shocked when they found her dead body in space. She was thinking about how alone she was once upon a time and how she wasn't that way anymore. She was thinking about all the money she had made out in space and wished she could have built an orphanage on her own planet.

Mostly she had time to reflect on Sakamoto and the way he would laugh at everything and the way he would light up a whole room. She thought about him and his stupid sunglasses as the iron and steel shriveled around her, shattering the gorilla glass, burning down the interiors as the wings of her ship melted away into liquid. Sakamoto, the loud person. Sakamoto, the samurai turned merchant extraordinaire.

"**_MUTSU!_** _**NOOOOOOOOOO!**_"

-x-

He slammed his fists on the portal dash, lump forming in his throat. He could make out a lovely blue cape, and her straw hat from the debris, but so far his eyes were too blurry to make out anything more distinct.

"C-computer," he forced himself to speak. "Identify Yato body?"

A pinpoint on the screen popped up a picture of Mutsu, whom seemed oddly singed rather than anything else.

"_Body identified. Suspected alive_."

A swell of joy overcame his heart. "Initiate rescue?"

"_Action not available_."

"... Okay then."

He slipped on an oxygen mask and his propeller boots, exiting his ship and not caring one whit what would happen to it. All that mattered was his comrade, the stone of his heart, his friend. He opened the door to his ship, slipping out into the vast expanse of the universe and swimming through the stardust and assorted debris floating in the vacuum.

This time, instead of scooping up stars, he scooped her up in his arms.

"Stupid," he finally said, taking off his oxygen mask and slipping it over her mouth, the teardrop from his eye flying away as a water bubble floating in the vast expanse of the stars and moons around them. _You stupid, brave, woman_. _Of course I fell in love with you, how could I not?_

_You came back for me._

Unbeknownst to either of them, someone else was tracking down Mutsu's spaceship. A catapult beam pulled the two of them into a foreign ship as Sakamoto gripped Mutsu's unconscious body in his arms, the Philosopher's Stone a heavy weight in his pocket.

No, I will not let you take us away, he thought angrily to himself. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a space gun, and aimed for the hole in the ship.

-x-

She woke up in his cabin, dazed and confused. Her clothes were frayed, and her fingertips were singed, sensitive to the touch when she twisted the doorknob to let herself out.

Sakamoto was skimming the spaceship across the galaxy when she came into the control unit room. At the sound of her footsteps, his head turned.

"Oh good, you're healing. Man, that's one hell of a body you have there - I bet you could regenerate a limb if you wanted to, huh?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she said quietly, though he can see her smile. "Even Yatos can't grow back limbs."

He laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. And though she's rolling her eyes, it's all music to her ears.

-x-

The space warp, he explains, was set up in time right before they rebooted the cannon that was capable shooting another legendary electromagnetic beam. Mutsu had been thoughtful enough to prepare an artificial type of teleportation that carried the ship several light years away in case of emergencies. It'd cost her a pretty penny, but by god, it worked. By some miracle of heaven he had been able to escape with an inch of their lives.

Mutsu is sipping hot tea in a ceramic mug when he makes a gesture indicating embarrassment, saying, "So, uh - yeah. We're good, I think. We'll reach the star shuttle in a few hours."

She sets down her beverage, and steels herself for possibly the most idiotic action she'll take all day.

"You all right?" he asks when she leans in, eyes steady and focused. And then his breath is cut short when her lips meet his. Instantaneously his hand reaches out for the back of her neck. For someone like her, who works sixty hours a week and doesn't believe in things like romance, her hair is so smooth and her skin is so soft.

"... You said you wouldn't ever fall in love," is the first faint thing he says when they separate from each other.

"Maybe I changed my mind," she replies back.

-x-

The man who greeted them at the Alpha Centauri station thanked them profusely. It was shortly after he had paid them handsomely for the delivery of the Philosopher's Stone, and Mutsu for one was glad to see it in the hands of someone whose name didn't start with Sakamoto and ended with Tatsuma.

"Would any of you two be interested in a wish?" the man asks, and for a second, Mutsu looks up at her partner, her all-too-handsome Captain for an answer.

He considers it, his brows furrowed for a second. For a moment, she's a little terrified of what will happen before he smiles warmly at the man and slips his fingers into hers.

"No," he says, and he laughs brightly. "I've got all the things I need."

-x-

Life back on the ship resumes as usual with a steady routine of her working and him slacking off, but these days he tries to sleep more often in her bed and kisses her sloppily when he thinks no one is looking.

Unfortunately, the circumstances that he perceives as no one looking is completely wrong, and at the end of the week, everyone in the Kaientai knows that the Vice Captain and the Captain are a couple. Which wouldn't be half so embarrassing if Granny hadn't gone up to Mutsu in the middle of canteen hour and said out loud, "I told you so," in a very smug, satisfied grin.

One evening, she's complaining about it as they're drawing constellations, taking turns at the telescope.

"It's really not that remarkable," she said.

"Oh, but it is," Sakamoto said. "Everyone wants to see a woman conquered in love."

"Is that how they see it?"

He pulls her into his arms and squeezes her tight.

"Well, they're happy for us. Isn't that good enough?"

And it's with that final question that she shuts her eyes and rests her head onto his shoulder.

"Yeah," Mutsu says, and smiles.

-x-

_The End_

-x-

* * *

a/n: IT IS FINISHED GOD BLESS. i hope people are happy with this.


End file.
